Writing is hard, but not for the reasons you think.

Have you ever tried to get ketchup out of a glass bottle? You can't just turn it upside down, because the bottleneck will create a vacuum and prevent any sauce from getting onto your fries. You have to tilt it just so, and smack it just right to get the right amount of ketchup onto the right part of your plate. 

Incorrect amount of tilt, and you get it on your pants. Too much smack, and you get way more than you could possibly use in one sitting. Get both parts wrong, and suddenly your aunt who took you out for the first decent meal you've had in weeks is calculating just how much bleach she'll need to get the ketchup stain out of her favorite shirt.

I'm about to go on a way-too-long tangent to explain why writing is just like that scenario right there, ketchup bottle, aunt, and all. So get comfortable, grab a pop and some popcorn, and hold on to your keyboards, because this winding ramble won't make too much sense until it's almost over.

Writers and artists are a special breed. I like to think everyone has a little spark of creativity in them, but artists and writers and musicians and the like choose to nurture that spark until it grows into this all-consuming flame. It takes a certain measure of eccentricity and unhinged-ness to continue stoking the fire of creativity and getting high off the smoke of the muse. So we, the eccentric, artistic types, become connoisseurs of those things, learning to harness them and use them to our benefit, chasing them down wherever we can find them. 

And the benefit we receive is rarely something tangible, like money. It's usually something abstract and indescribable, like euphoria. Let's be honest here, the phrase "starving artist" exists for a very real reason. Making a living as a writer is a huge feat because so few people can do that. But man cannot live off of bread alone! Artists and writers need to create in order to survive. Otherwise, life stops being worth living.  

The act of creating is unequivocally addicting, and no two artists get the same high from it. But we all crave it, and constantly. And I have a theory about why it feels so good to pat our ketchup out onto those proverbial fries for an audience, any audience at all (even just ourselves!) to admire and critique. Ready to learn why authors are ketchup bottles? Okay, here we go.

Everyone, including you, has entire worlds inside them waiting to be explored. Within each of us are entire planets full of people just waiting to exist. You, and I, and everyone we know, are walking multiverses, and what's inside is different for every single person. We may all hold variations of some similar thing or another, but the individual details, the subtle nuances, the intricacies are all unique. They're born of experience and synapses and epigenetics and internal language.

And creative types, like myself, hear the call of those worlds and those people clear as day. We sometimes find ourselves so full to the brim with screaming galaxies and shouting cities, that the bottleneck gets blocked and we have to go in with our fingers and open up an air pocket just so we can breathe. And that's what makes writing so hard for so many of us!

Imagine being full to bursting, all the way up to your bottleneck, with stories and characters and ideas and worlds and all the fun things that fuel the fire of creativity... but it's all trying to come out at once! Someone has turned the full-up bottle upside down and nothing is coming out! That, to me, is the hardest part about being a writer -- or any form of creative-type-being. 

I was stuck upside down for a long time, but I think I've finally found the tilt and force that works for me, at least right now. Words and universes are pouring out of me, and I just wanted to celebrate that with you. 

Thanks for reading. I hope you're doing well. The sun is returning, at last! 

Sincerely,

Your favorite author.